MIT Cascon System for Analyzing International Conflict

"The historian of great events is always oppressed by the difficulty of tracing the silent, subtle influences, which in all communities precede and prepare the way for violent outbursts and uprisings." -- Sir Winston Churchill. Frontiers and Wars. New York: Smithmark, 1995, originally published in 1898.

CASCON is a computerized history-based conflict analysis and decision-support system, designed to serve as both an aid to the memory, and as an aid to the imagination. CASCON derives from earlier research at MIT under the direction of Professor Lincoln P. Bloomfield on the subject of local conflict and its prevention.

The CASCON historical database includes up to date information on 85 post-World War II conflict cases. The history of each case is structured using the Bloomfield-Leiss conflict phase model which has been widely adopted. Substantive expert codings of up to 571 factors in ten categories capture the influence of events and circumstances on the progress of each case toward or away from violence. Users may research and code additional conflict cases for use along with the historical database.

Students, scholars and professional analysts interested in preventive diplomacy and early warning have used CASCON for precedent-based searches to compare new or incipient conflict situations to some or all of the database (augmented by user-coded cases). An earlier version won the EDUCOM / NCRIPTAL Award for Distinguished Software in Political Science in 1988.

Click here to read more about the book

CASCON is now available for general use in the classroom, in research, in policy, and to the general public in a book entitled Managing International Conflict: From Theory to Policy by Bloomfield and Moulton, published by St. Martin's Press (New York). The book provides a compact substantive text on conflict along with the CASCON conflict database and the newest version of CASCON software for use with Microsoft Windows.

To buy a copy on the web, click here:

Accidental Encounters with History (and some lessons learned)

Lincoln Bloomfield's latest book recounts a half century of extraordinary experiences over in the State Department, as a White House staff member, a professor at MIT, and being on the lecture platform in thirty-five countries. Two themes run throughout the book: a deep interest in governance through bureaucracies; and his quest for greater rationality in foreign affairs.

Click on the book image at left to buy a copy from Barnes & Noble online.

MIT Cascon System for Analyzing International Conflict

The CASCON Approach to Conflict Analysis

Conflict cases in CASCON (with updates through May 2000)

Guides to Using CASCON

Downloadable Updates

Technical Information